text:
There are a few situations where seemingly harmless use of a borrowed reference can lead to problems. These all have to do with implicit invocations of the interpreter, which can cause the owner of a reference to dispose of it.
The first and most important case to know about is using Py_DECREF() on an unrelated object while borrowing a reference to a list item. For instance:
bug(PyObject *list) { PyObject *item = PyList_GetItem(list, 0); PyList_SetItem(list, 1, PyInt_FromLong(0L)); PyObject_Print(item, stdout, 0); /* BUG! */ }
This function first borrows a reference to list[0]
, then
replaces list[1]
with the value 0
, and finally prints
the borrowed reference. Looks harmless, right? But it's not!
Let's follow the control flow into PyList_SetItem(). The list owns references to all its items, so when item 1 is replaced, it has to dispose of the original item 1. Now let's suppose the original item 1 was an instance of a user-defined class, and let's further suppose that the class defined a __del__() method. If this class instance has a reference count of 1, disposing of it will call its __del__() method.
Since it is written in Python, the __del__() method can execute
arbitrary Python code. Could it perhaps do something to invalidate
the reference to item
in bug()? You bet! Assuming
that the list passed into bug() is accessible to the
__del__() method, it could execute a statement to the effect of
"del list[0]", and assuming this was the last reference to that
object, it would free the memory associated with it, thereby
invalidating item
The solution, once you know the source of the problem, is easy: temporarily increment the reference count. The correct version of the function reads:
no_bug(PyObject *list) { PyObject *item = PyList_GetItem(list, 0); Py_INCREF(item); PyList_SetItem(list, 1, PyInt_FromLong(0L)); PyObject_Print(item, stdout, 0); Py_DECREF(item); }
This is a true story. An older version of Python contained variants of this bug and someone spent a considerable amount of time in a C debugger to figure out why his __del__() methods would fail...
The second case of problems with a borrowed reference is a variant
involving threads. Normally, multiple threads in the Python
interpreter can't get in each other's way, because there is a global
lock protecting Python's entire object space. However, it is possible
to temporarily release this lock using the macro
, and to re-acquire it using
. This is common around blocking I/O
calls, to let other threads use the processor while waiting for the I/O to
complete. Obviously, the following function has the same problem as
the previous one:
bug(PyObject *list) { PyObject *item = PyList_GetItem(list, 0); Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS ...some blocking I/O call... Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS PyObject_Print(item, stdout, 0); /* BUG! */ }
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.


text:
Deschutes Brewery Sales Department Adds Two New People
Bend, OR – Deschutes Brewery has hired Craig Marshall as its new South Central zone sales manager and Gavin Stoub as its new Illinois market sales manager. Marshall, who is based in Phoenix, AZ, will oversee sales activities and team members in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Utah and New Mexico. Stoub, who is based in the Chicago area, will manage distributor and account relationships within the state of Illinois.
In his position as zone manager, Marshall will be overseeing the sales managers in each of the states within his region. He will be providing strategic direction for sales while also building relationships and providing customer service to on and off-premise accounts. Marshall most recently served as a national account manager for AmeriGas for the western half of the United States, and has also held sales management positions for companies like the Craft Brewers Alliance, United States Beverage, Coors Brewing Company and Arizona Beverage Distributing Company. He holds a degree in business from Arizona State University.
As market sales manager for Illinois, Stoub will be working closely with distributor Wirtz Beverage in managing Deschutes Brewery brands, including establishing performance goals. He will be responsible for providing customer service and customer education on Deschutes Brewery beers to accounts, and running promotional events in the region. Stoub most recently served as a market manager for Goose Island Beer Company, and also has a strong background in the restaurant business. He holds a bachelor's degree in business from Eastern Illinois University.
About Deschutes Brewery
Founded in 1988 as a brew pub in downtown Bend, Oregon, Deschutes Brewery is known for such brands as Black Butte Porter, its flagship brew and the nation's number one selling craft porter, and the popular Mirror Pond Pale Ale. In addition to its original Bend pub, the brewery opened a second pub in Portland's Pearl District in 2008. The company's main brewing facility is located in Bend's Old Mill District and produces over 250,000 barrels of beer annually for distribution in 20 states and two provinces. To find out more, visit www.DeschutesBrewery.com.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
XML::Feed - Syndication feed parser and auto-discovery
use XML::Feed; my $feed = XML::Feed->parse(URI->new('http://example.com/atom.xml')) or die XML::Feed->errstr; print $feed->title, "\n"; for my $entry ($feed->entries) { } ## Find all of the syndication feeds on a given page, using ## auto-discovery. my @feeds = XML::Feed->find_feeds('http://example.com/');
XML::Feed is a syndication feed parser for both RSS and Atom feeds. It also implements feed auto-discovery for finding feeds, given a URI.
XML::Feed supports the following syndication feed formats:
The goal of XML::Feed is to provide a unified API for parsing and using the various syndication formats. The different flavors of RSS and Atom handle data in different ways: date handling; summaries and content; escaping and quoting; etc. This module attempts to remove those differences by providing a wrapper around the formats and the classes implementing those formats (XML::RSS and XML::Atom::Feed). For example, dates are handled differently in each of the above formats. To provide a unified API for date handling, XML::Feed converts all date formats transparently into DateTime objects, which it then returns to the caller.
Creates a new empty XML::Feed object using the format $format.
$feed = XML::Feed->new('Atom'); $feed = XML::Feed->new('RSS'); $feed = XML::Feed->new('RSS', version => '0.91');
Parses a syndication feed identified by $stream and returns an XML::Feed object. $stream can be any one of the following:
Scalar reference
A reference to string containing the XML body of the feed.
An open filehandle from which the feed XML will be read.
File name
The name of a file containing the feed XML.
URI object
A URI from which the feed XML will be retrieved.
$format allows you to override format guessing.
Gets a feed from a file.
Gets a feed from pre-opened filehandle.
Gets a feed from a URI.
Given a URI $uri, use auto-discovery to find all of the feeds linked from that page (using <link> tags).
Returns a list of feed URIs.
Given the xml of a feed return what format it is in, with Atom or RSS for all versions of RSS. Note that you pass in a scalar ref to the xml string.
Converts the XML::Feed object into the $format format, and returns the new object.
Splices in all of the entries from the feed $other_feed into $feed, skipping posts that are already in $feed.
Returns the format of the feed (Atom, or some version of RSS).
The title of the feed/channel.
The url base of the feed/channel.
The permalink of the feed/channel.
The description or tagline of the feed/channel.
Alias for $feed->tagline.
The author of the feed/channel.
The language of the feed.
The copyright notice of the feed.
A DateTime object representing the last-modified date of the feed.
If present, $modified should be a DateTime object.
The generator of the feed.
The Atom Self-link of the feed:
A string.
A list of the entries/items in the feed. Returns an array containing XML::Feed::Entry objects.
A synonym (alias) for $feed->entries.
Adds an entry to the feed. $entry should be an XML::Feed::Entry object in the correct format for the feed.
Returns an XML representation of the feed, in the format determined by the current format of the $feed object.
The Atom First-link for feed paging and archiving (RFC 5005).
The Atom Last-link for feed paging and archiving.
The Atom Next-link for feed paging and archiving.
The Atom Previous-link for feed paging and archiving.
The Atom Current-link for feed paging and archiving.
The Atom Prev-Archive-link for feed paging and archiving.
If you want to use another RSS parser class than XML::RSS (default), you can change the class by setting $PREFERRED_PARSER variable in the XML::Feed::Format::RSS package.
$XML::Feed::Format::RSS::PREFERRED_PARSER = "XML::RSS::LibXML";
Note: this will only work for parsing feeds, not creating feeds.
Note: Only XML::RSS::LibXML version 0.3004 is known to work at the moment.
Although the RSS specification states that there can be at most one enclosure per item some feeds break this rule.
If this variable is set then XML::Feed captures all of them and makes them available as a list.
Otherwise it returns the last enclosure parsed.
Note: XML::RSS version 1.44 is needed for this to work.
For reference, this cgi script will create valid, albeit nonsensical feeds (according to http://feedvalidator.org anyway) for Atom 1.0 and RSS 0.90, 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0.
#!perl -w use strict; use CGI; use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser); use DateTime; use XML::Feed; my $cgi = CGI->new; my @args = ( $cgi->param('format') // "Atom" ); push @args, ( version => $cgi->param('version') ) if $cgi->param('version'); my $feed = XML::Feed->new(@args); $feed->id("http://".time.rand()."/"); $feed->title('Test Feed'); $feed->link($cgi->url); $feed->self_link($cgi->url( -query => 1, -full => 1, -rewrite => 1) ); $feed->modified(DateTime->now); my $entry = XML::Feed::Entry->new(); $entry->id("http://".time.rand()."/"); $entry->link("http://example.com"); $entry->title("Test entry"); $entry->summary("Test summary"); $entry->content("Foo"); $entry->modified(DateTime->now); $entry->author('firstname.lastname@example.com (Testy McTesterson)'); $feed->add_entry($entry); my $mime = ("Atom" eq $feed->format) ? "application/atom+xml" : "application/rss+xml"; print $cgi->header($mime); print $feed->as_xml;
XML::Feed is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Except where otherwise noted, XML::Feed is Copyright 2004-2008 Six Apart. All rights reserved.
For support contact the XML::Feed mailing list - email@example.com.
The latest version of XML::Feed can be found at
To install XML::Feed, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm XML::Feed
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install XML::Feed
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.


text:
BERLIN — The city of Salisbury this week announced it had negotiated a settlement in its portion of a $20 million-plus civil suit against the nation's major oil companies over a potentially harmful and perhaps deadly gasoline additive that has leached into the drinking water supply of the seven jurisdictions, including the town of Berlin and Worcester County.
Salisbury officials announced on Monday they had reached a settlement in the civil suit against 43 total defendants including all of the nation's major gasoline manufacturers, distributors and their subsidiaries over the presence of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) in the city's drinking water supply wells. According to the terms of the settlement, Salisbury is set to receive an award of $900,000 from the defendants, which will result in a net $700,000-plus after legal costs are subtracted.
The suit was first filed in the Circuit Court in Baltimore City last January and was transferred to the U.S. District Court in April. Early this summer, the case was transferred again to the U.S. District Court in New York where it was consolidated with a growing number of similar cases filed by jurisdictions all over the country in the interest of judicial efficiency.
The case in Maryland, from which Salisbury has now negotiated a settlement, includes seven total plaintiffs, including the town of Berlin and Worcester County. Other jurisdictions named as plaintiffs in the Maryland case include Chestertown, Aberdeen, Taneytown and Sharptown. While Salisbury has settled its portion of the case, the suit moves forward for the other plaintiffs in Maryland including Berlin and Worcester County.
The plaintiffs allege the oil companies for decades have added MTBE to gasoline during the refining process. According to the complaint, even in small quantities, MTBE gives water a foul taste and odor the renders it unusable and unfit for human consumption. Research shows some people can detect the turpentine-like taste and odor in concentrations in water as low as one part per billion or lower.
Perhaps more importantly, MTBE is a known animal carcinogen that is linked to many potential health problems. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers MTBE to be a possible human carcinogen.
In a release this week announcing the settlement, Salisbury officials said the presence of MTBE was detected in only one of its 10 municipal water wells, Park Well 10 in the City Park, and that the well was shut down in November 2010 once lab results were received. When the suit was filed earlier this year, Worcester County officials said MTBE had been detected in at least two wells in the county at-large although the exact locations were uncertain. Similarly, Berlin Mayor Gee Williams told the Dispatch in April the town had joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff because MTBE had been detected in the town's water supply, but the exact locations were not known because the samples had been taken so long ago.
According to the statement released by Salisbury this week, the town's citizens should know that their water supply continues to meet state and federal standards. To illustrate the point, Mayor Jim Ireton, Jr. on Tuesday drank two glasses of water directly from a well that had not been chlorinated or processed.
Sometime after 1979, the defendants started manufacturing and distributing MTBE in order to boost octane levels in higher grades of gasoline. According to the complaint, widespread use of MTBE ended in 2006 when its potential harmful effects became apparent, but its durability and low solubility makes it a persistent danger.
"This case involves Maryland's most precious natural resource-water," the complaint reads. "Throughout this great state, public water wells are contaminated by MTBE, a gasoline additive needlessly and recklessly added to gasoline in Maryland."
According to the release from Salisbury this week, the big oil companies continued to add MTBE to gasoline at varying levels between 1979 and 2007, but the chemical often leaked from underground storage tanks at service stations and continued to contaminate groundwater. As a result, jurisdictions across Maryland, including Salisbury, Berlin and Worcester County, and all over the country, have filed lawsuits to offset the cost of removing MTBE from their water supplies.
"In that litigation, documents obtained from the oil industry revealed that the companies knew when they chose to use MTBE that the chemical would contaminate groundwater, yet they decided to use it anyway, leaving hundreds of water suppliers to clean up the mess years later," the Salisbury statement reads. "Many states have now banned the sale of gasoline containing MTBE and the oil companies have stopped blending it into gasoline, but they have not volunteered to remove it from water supplies or to reimburse cities which have spent money to do so."
Salisbury officials said this week they will use its $700,000 share of the settlement to make improvements at the Park Water Plant and Well Field to ensure the provision of a safe water supply.


text:
The Man With No Name or a pale rider named Death? With 1985's Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood returned to the saddle as actor-director after a nine-year absence from the Western genre. His saddle bag is a mixed one, though Pale Rider still has the touch of quality associated with latter-day Eastwood. If the film plays more like a Western refresher course for Eastwood (between more highly regarded outings), it's also an impeccably photographed film, with strong production design and use of locations.
The simplistic story is essentially a straight rip from 1953's Shane. A small community—in this case miners and their families losing their faith in the Gold Rush—falls prey to a stronger force (the industrial hydraulic mining outfit run by Richard Dysart's dirty, no-good Coy LaHood). The community has a good man and a moral center (Michael Moriarty's Hull Barret), but needs a hero or, perhaps, a Savior. Enter a mysterious stranger (Eastwood's "Preacher") with the power to inspire and put fear into the hearts of evildoers (including John Russell, excellent as corrupt Marshall Stockburn). When his work is done here, Preacher can no longer tarry, but must ride off into the sunset.
Working well within these simplistic parameters, Eastwood doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. The actors are believable, though only Hull's character satisfactorily develops (we wouldn't want "Preacher" to lose his mystery, but the other characters needn't be cardboard). Precisely because the script gives them too little to play, it's useful that Eastwood has evocative actors in the roles of Hull's live-in girlfriend/potential fiancée Sarah Wheeler (Carrie Snodgress) and her daughter Megan (Sydney Penny). Populating the rest of the supporting cast are familiar character actors ranging from Doug McGrath to Chris Penn to Richard "Jaws" Kiel.
If anything elevates Pale Rider from a mere pastiche (however well crafted) of Western clichés, it's the subtly ambiguous treatment of Eastwood's character. One can read the film as a flat-footedly literal good-versus-evil oater, but Eastwood certainly invites viewers to regard "Preacher" as an avenging spirit returned to mete out Death to the man who killed him, with justice for the downtrodden a pleasing bonus. As star, Eastwood is potent and charismatic, and as director, he demonstrates the craft that would eventually win him an Oscar.
Clint Eastwood is rapidly becoming the best-represented Hollywood talent on Blu-ray, largely thanks to Warner Home Video. Warner's reissue of Pale Rider doesn't have a lot of bonus features: only the theatrical trailers for Pale Rider (1:12) and Unforgiven (1:55). But the most special of features here is a very handsome picture. Certainly there is no better way to watch Pale Rider in the comfort of your home: the image is natural, clean and detailed, with accurate tones and satisfying depth, and handles well the film's delicate interplay of sunlight and shadows. My only real complaint is that the picture suffers from bothersome horizontal jitter (someone needs to invent a digital tool to address this issue, still cropping up in film-to-digital transfers). The soundtrack has been cleaned up very nicely, and provided a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround mix that's crisp and (pardon the pun) soundly arranged.
Review gear: |
Panasonic Viera TC-P55VT30 55" Plasma 1080p 3D HDTV
Oppo BDP-93 Universal Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player
Denon AVR2112CI Integrated Network A/V Surround Receiver
Pioneer SP-BS41-LR Bookshelf Speaker (2)
Pioneer SP-C21 Center Speaker
Pioneer SW-8 Subwoofer


text:
Bob Lefsetz is a music industry observer, and publisher of the Lefsetz letter:
This is all about name-recognition. Investors are stupid. They know little about the products of the companies they lay their dollars down for. They're acting on buzz.
And buzz has nothing to do with profits. Certainly not long term.
What we've got here is a phenomenal job of brand-building. Tim Westergren, like a carnival barker went out and sold a service based on a combination of hucksterism and I'm on your side duplicity. If Mr. Westergren truly cared about music, he'd be a manager. I haven't seen someone this dedicated to building something from zero to superstar status in eons. But there's too little money actually promoting music, building stars, and talent talks back, digits do not.
In other words, it's really damn hard to nurture and break talent.
It's much easier to build upon the hard work of others. Which is why record labels/rights holders demand so much from Pandora, after all, it's built upon the equity they've created, without the music, Pandora is nothing.
Analysts have noted this. Pandora's lack of scalability, its huge rights payments.
But what analysts have not drilled down upon is the service itself.
It just doesn't work.
People become infatuated with new technology. They love to check things out and tell others about them. Isn't that the key to making a YouTube clip go viral? But just because you've got millions of views that does not mean you're rich. Or that you can replicate your success. It just means that for a moment everybody got excited about you.
For a moment, everybody got excited about Pandora. It was so easy to use. But did it satiate? Was it satisfying?
If music radio is to survive, and that's doubtful, it's all about curation. Serving up music you want to hear. Pandora fails at this. Despite the vaunted Genome, just too many suggestions are tuneouts, some positively dumbfounding. Do you really expect people to sit for this, pay for it with their cash or time in a world where people only want the best and have no time to waste?
In other words, the future of listening to music, of breaking acts, of exhibition, is not Pandora.
Slacker does a far better job of curation, because it's done by human beings. But Slacker doesn't have a Westergren, almost no one knows the company.
But Slacker doesn't satisfy either. You're interested in what they air but you constantly want to hit the button to see what's next. You're interested in the list more than actually listening!
Investors expect that in the future people will pay to listen to crap. Huh?
The future of music exhibition does not revolve around algorithms but people. It's about personalities, cults, built around the deejay. Which is why all radio research is flawed. Radio is not about the tracks as much as the trust. Is the deejay my friend? We hang with imperfect friends, we'll listen to a song on their recommendation that we may not initially like because we like THEM! We don't really like Pandora. There's nothing there other than a bunch of wanna get rich suits.
Just like there were MP3 players before iPods, the future of an ad-supported streaming music service, or even a paid subscription service, is not Pandora, but something after, something later, something further down the development curve.
We see this all the time. Techies were communicating online for years before AOL made it easy and desirable for the general public to get involved.
Windows 3.0 was a vast improvement over MS-DOS, but it wasn't until Windows 95 was released that computer acquisition by the public went nuclear.
Hell, disc burning was all the rage eleven years ago, but the trend was brief, it was eclipsed by the iPod.
I'd love to tell you Pandora is a great service. Aren't we all looking for someone to turn us on to new music? But every time I use it I'm frustrated that its suggestions aren't better. As for those testifying about it, I just put their opinions in the pile of the ignorant. No one ever e-mails me about Pandora who has tried Slacker. Pandora users are not usually SiriusXM subscribers. What we've got here is a huge set of clueless adopters who will jump rather quickly to the next best solution. Which is coming.
I mean isn't Pandora just a list? And I can use that same list to check out tracks on Spotify or Rhapsody or MOG or…
But everybody gets caught up in the mania. No one wants to investigate and learn the truth, someone pointing out flaws is accused of being a downer, a naysayer, someone who doesn't believe in the future.
But that doesn't make the enthusiasts right.
And just because there's a blockbuster IPO that doesn't mean the company has a future.
P.S. I do believe adding comedy to Pandora was a brilliant move. But they haven't marketed this feature well.
P.P.S. If you really want to know what's going on with Pandora, follow the tweets of David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby On Rails and best-selling co-author of "Rework". Hansson is the antithesis of Wall Street. He's about building businesses that make money from day one, he's about PROFIT! What a concept! All we've got is these corporations losing money making their executives rich. Like Live Nation and Warner. Come on, there are no miracles here. Occasionally companies turn the corner but why can't these companies make money now? Why can't Live Nation balance the books and pay its execs less and make money today? Or at least say the loss is about investment in Ticketmaster, in the future. Same deal with Warner Music. If you can't make money running it, maybe you're not so smart, or maybe you're just a crook, or maybe it's just a bad business. If it's your own private company, do what you want. But if your company is public, you've got a fiduciary duty to
investors But no one believes in the law anymore. Not Goldman Sachs, not the second rate banks. Everybody just wants to get rich. From Westergren to the venture capitalists to the wannabe artists. And that's much easier to do than to make a great record, to make a truly great product. Pandora is all about subterfuge, the same way labels sell generic music. Get everyone excited, put down naysayers, get the mainstream to hype you and sell. But that stuff is almost always crap. Just like Pandora.
Follow Hansson on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/#!/dhh
Or you can go to his homepage where he posts his most recent tweets: http://www.loudthinking.com/
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,


text:
Poor picture or sound quality when viewing Internet content.
NOTE: Not all TVs or Blu-ray Disc® players and Home Theater systems have Internet capabilities. To verify whether your unit offers this capability, check the specifications. Manuals are posted on your model support page.
The picture and sound quality may be negatively affected by things like a poor-quality Internet connection, the quality of the Internet content, or the speed of the Internet connection. If you are experiencing any of these picture or sound issues through your connected unit, follow these steps to try to resolve the issue:
- Make sure the speed of the Internet connection being used is the recommended speed or faster.
- Speed of at least 2.5 Mbps for Standard Definition (SD) video.
- Speed of at least 10 Mbps for High Definition (HD) video.
- If possible, try adjusting the display size of the video.
- Select a different video source.
NOTE: If the quality of the playback improves, the issue is with the Internet content.


text:
Food Production Jobs at Papa Johns
Found 0 Food Production jobs in Scottsburg, IN at Papa Johns
*** No jobs were found that match your selections
Search ALL JobsSearch ALL Food Production jobs
Search ALL Food Production jobs in Indiana
Search ALL Scottsburg, IN jobs
Food Production Jobs in Scottsburg, IN with Papa Johns Apply online today for Food Production Jobs in Scottsburg, IN with Papa Johns and join our pizza family! Papa Johns is hiring enthusiastic and friendly team members throughout our over 5,000 restaurant locations and at our corporate HQs in Louisville, KY, and Atlanta, GA. We know that the secret to success is much like the secret to making a better pizza - the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Join our pizza family on our journey of pizza perfection that began when we first opened our doors more than 30 years ago. Food Production Jobs in Scottsburg, IN with Papa Johns can include: Lead Production Team Member - Team members in these food production jobs are responsible for the Standard Operating Procedures within the department. Production Shift Supervisor - Team members in these food production jobs are responsible for assisting the Production Team Leader in the management of operations including actively working towards improving the productivity and efficiency of team members, while ensuring Standard Operating Procedures are followed. Production Team Member - Team members in these food production jobs are responsible for producing high-quality dough within specifications, maintaining all equipment in a highly sanitized environment, and ensuring all food products are handled properly. At Papa Johns, we're all about creating an inclusive culture that encourages team members from all backgrounds and experiences to be the best they can be. We invest more than many others in the industry in our effort to consistently deliver superior service and the highest quality pizza. Our fundamental belief is simple: take care of your people and give them the best to work with, and you will make superior quality pizza. Apply online for Food Production Jobs in Scottsburg, IN today.
Join Our Talent Network
Featured Jobs
Associate Lab Manager
The Associate Lab Manager performs evaluations on all PJI proprietary and non-proprietary products and ingredients (flour, cheese, meat, sauces, etc.) for quality compliance and product development and supports the QA team on product and packaging related projects . ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned …
Production Shift Supervisor
Papa John's is looking for an energetic, team-oriented Sanitation/Production Supervisor. The Sanitation/Production Shift Supervisor is responsible for supervising all aspects of sanitation and dough production within the Quality Control Center (QCC). This position ensures adherence to all quality assurance programs, sanitation requirements, meets plant productivity goals, develops leadership skills in …
Production Operator
Come Join the Better Ingredients, Better Pizza Team! We are looking for a Production Team Member who is responsible for producing high quality dough within PJ Food Service specifications, maintaining all equipment in a highly sanitized environment and ensuring all dough is handled properly. Hiring for first and second shift …


text:
Lights, Camera, Photocast: Sharing Photos with iPhoto 6
- What Exactly Is Photocastingand How Does it Work?
- Publishing a Photocast Step-by-Step
- What Happens After You Click Publish?
- Stopping a Photocast
- Subscribing to a Photocast Using iPhoto 6
- Receiving Updates from a Photocast
- Subscribing Using Safari or Another RSS Reader
Photocasting is one of the biggest new features in iPhoto 6 and it offers a great new way to share your photos with family and friends. But how do you publish a photocast and make certain that anyone with a Mac or PC can view it in spite of the problems reported with some RSS readers?
What Exactly Is Photocasting—and How Does it Work?
iPhoto has always been designed with ease of use in mind, making it easy to copy photos from your camera, organize them in albums, and share them in a variety of ways—from printing at home to ordering prints and photo books to putting them on the Web. By linking iPhoto with Apple's .Mac service, you can create slick, professional-looking albums with the mere click of a few buttons.
iPhoto even lets you share photo albums (or your entire iPhoto library) directly with other Mac users, providing you're on the same home, office, or school network using the Bon Jour/Rendezvous network protocol. Just check the Share My Photos and/or Look For Shared Photos options in the Sharing pane of the iPhoto preferences (found under the iPhoto menu in the menu bar) and you're set for sharing photos with or viewing photos of any Mac user on the network (see Figure 1). No need to email or upload photos to .Mac (or another Web service) or to go looking for someone else's pictures online. Everything is simply there in iPhoto.
Figure 1 Setting sharing options in the iPhoto preferences
The reason I mention these two iPhoto features is that the new photocasting option in iPhoto 6 is almost a combination of the two. (iPhoto 6 is part of Apple's new iLife '06, which comes free with all new Macs and is a $79 upgrade for existing Mac users.)
iPhoto 6 allows you to share your photo albums with other iPhoto 6 users as photocasts. When someone subscribes to your photocast, the contents of the album are automatically added as a special photocast album to his or her iPhoto library. When you add, change, or delete pictures from the photocast album, subscribers see those changes reflected in the photocast albums in their iPhoto libraries. As with sharing photos using Bon Jour/Rendezvous, there's no need to email or visit Web sites—the process is almost completely transparent to you as the creator of the photocast and to subscribers.
Photocasts are not just for iPhoto 6 users. Apple designed photocasts using RSS, the technology that's used to power podcasts, My Yahoo, and many news and blog sites. RSS allows users to subscribe to a feed that contains regularly updated content (such as a blog or a podcast) by using an RSS reader. The RSS reader periodically checks the feed to see whether new content has been posted. When new content is posted, the RSS reader displays either the entire content or an abstract of the content to the user, along with a link to the content in its entirety.
Photocasts are actually RSS feeds that contain photos rather than audio files, text, or Web content. So any user with a recent-version RSS reader can subscribe to a photocast and view the photos it contains. Subscribers using an RSS reader can then print or save the photos in a photocast. If they have an earlier version of iPhoto, they can even add the photos to their iPhoto library manually.
The way in which photocasting actually works is that when you publish an album as a photocast, iPhoto uploads the photos to a section of your iDisk (which is why photocasting requires a .Mac membership). At the same time, iPhoto generates an RSS feed that contains information about where the photos are stored, which is also stored in your iDisk.
You then give people the address of that RSS feed, which iPhoto will tell you once it publishes the photocast (it will even give you the option of sending an announcement email). If your photocast subscribers have iLife '06, they can subscribe using iPhoto and it will automatically create a photocast album and download the images for them.
If your subscribers don't have iPhoto 6, they can use another RSS reader. Any time you make changes to the album that is being photocast, iPhoto will automatically update the RSS feed and upload or delete photos from your iDisk, if needed. When iPhoto or another RSS reader detects a change in the RSS feed stored in your iDisk, it will download the appropriate new photos (and delete any that have been removed).


text:
HOPE seeking new tenants
MIDDLEBURY — The local human services agency Helping Overcome Poverty's Effects (HOPE) is trying to recruit some new tenants to generate the necessary rent to help pay off and maintain the organization's John V. Craven Community Services Center off Boardman Street in Middlebury.
The building has a combined total of 6,785 square feet of rentable space, of which 2,942 square feet is currently vacant, according to HOPE Executive Director Jeanne Montross. Those vacancies were in large part created by the recent departure of longstanding tenant Addison County Transit Resources — which moved into its own facility off Creek Road at the end of last month — and the closing on June 30 of the Vermont Adult Learning child care center.
HOPE charges a negotiable rental fee of $16 per square foot, which includes electricity, heat, parking, rubbish disposal and use of a communal kitchen and conference room space. It cost HOPE a grand total of $203,282 to operate the building last year, a sum that includes debt services and some reserve funds and a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) of $75 for each of its nonprofit tenants. The organization only rents to nonprofits, which allows the building to remain exempt from property taxes. HOPE officials agreed to pay the town $75 per year for each of its tenants (including itself) per a PILOT agreement with the town of Middlebury.
The organization makes monthly mortgage payments of $168 and $2,876, as well as $1,174 per month through the town of Middlebury for a federal loan that was used to help finance construction of the building more than 14 years ago. HOPE has already paid off related debt to the Vermont Community Loan Fund and the Institute for Community Economics, according to Montross. Leaders of the organization — then known as Addison County Community Action Group — reasoned that having a collection of like-minded human services tenants would not only help retire the building debt, but also provide clients with one-stop shopping for services.
But HOPE now finds itself with a lot of vacant space, space that needs to generate some rental revenue for the organization to pay its bills.
"We are concerned about it," Montross said. "If we operate the building at a loss, we have to get the money from somewhere else."
A few local nonprofits have checked out the space, including the Counseling Service of Addison County (CSAC) and the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO).
Counseling Service officials decided the space did not fit their programming needs, Montross said.
HOPE officials were hoping the CVOEO — which operates locally as Addison Community Action — might consider moving into the building. The two organizations serve the same constituency and operate their own food shelves. CVOEO and ACCAG were housed under the same roof on Court Street until a rather acrimonious split two decades ago.
By most accounts the two organizations have been working well together in recent years. CVOEO is currently looking for new quarters; its lease for 2,150 square feet in the Carrara office building at 700 Exchange St. expired in February of 2012 and the organization has been staying there on a month-to-month basis since then, according to Bill Townsend, property manager for Carrara.
CVOEO is the lone remaining tenant at 700 Exchange St. The state agencies that had also been renting there at a rate of $16.10 per square foot elected to relocate to a new office building in Middlebury South Village, off Court Street, where they are paying a "full-service" rate of $26.50 per square foot.
"To better position ourselves to attract other professional office tenants, we have decided to undertake a substantial renovation of the whole property, including the current CVOEO space; so in April of this year we notified CVOEO of our intentions and requested that they plan to move out by Oct. 10," Townsend said in an e-mail response to a recent inquiry about 700 Exchange St. "While we do not currently have any firm tenants for the new space, in general we have been getting considerably more inquiries about office space in recent months than we have the last few years."
"We would very much like to partner with CVOEO on the food shelf and to eliminate some redundancies and make it easier for our constituency to access the resources of both organizations," said HOPE board Chairwoman Becky Dayton.
CVOEO Executive Director Jan Demers said her organization looked at the HOPE space and decided it was not a good fit, citing specifically the rental fee.
"It's not what we have in our budget," Demers said. "We're working to make the best choice."
HOPE officials said they have an account from which to take funds to bridge building related expenses in the short term, but said that can't long continue.
"If we don't have another tenant by the end of the year, it will be very difficult," Montross said. "I'm concerned, and the board is concerned."
Reporter John Flowers is at [email protected].
More News
Bernard D. Kimball, 76, of Middlebury
MIDDLEBURY — Bernard D. Kimball, 76, passed away in Bennington Hospital on Jan. 10, 2023. … (read more)
News Uncategorized
Fresh Air Fund youths returning to county
The Fresh Air Fund, initiated in 1877 to give kids from New York City the opportunity to e … (read more)
Obituaries Uncategorized
Mark A. Nelson of Bristol
BRISTOL — A memorial service for Mark A. Nelson of Bristol will be held 1 p.m. on Saturday … (read more)


text:
Earlier this year, I created a series of prints where I combined Little Golden Books with what I felt were a few video games that were instant classics. You can read more about those by clicking HERE. The response was excellent, and because I had so much fun creating them, I went ahead and made a few more!
This generation of consoles has lasted much longer than any of the previous ones and with that, we've had some incredible gaming experiences. More so than I can remember with any other console generation. As I said before, I wanted this series to look back at games that have had a huge impact on not only me, but on the industry as a whole. I felt Red Dead Redemption, Half-Life 2 and Mass Effect were a worthy follow-up to my previous series. I hope you guys and gals dig 'em!
I love video games, I love Little Golden Books... and I loved combining them into the artwork you see below.
"Don't be too eager to grow up. It ain't as much fun as it looks."
To purchase a print, click HERE
"So, wake up, Mister Freeman. Wake up and... Smell the ashes."
To purchase a print, click HERE
"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you- I'm too busy playing with my toys."
To purchase a print, click HERE
You can order all 3 prints together! Click HERE


text:
Global climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humankind in the twenty-first century. It is occurring at a time when China's economic rise is leading to substantial environmental problems, combined with escalating demands on global resources. Many commentators have warned of impending economic collapse, rising social conflicts and large-scale public health disasters.
It is not only the modernisation drive in China that is at stake. The spillover effects across borders also present security concerns at the regional and global levels. From a security perspective, the emerging environmental crisis is generally cast in highly negative terms. Limited attention has been given to the question of whether China can adapt. In the case of climate change this is now an urgent task. On the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (henceforth the Tibetan plateau), climate impacts pose significant security risks for China and the Asia region. The ability to adapt is of critical importance to the future sustainability of the ecosystems as well as the millions of people they serve.
The Tibetan Plateau is the largest high altitude landmass on earth, covering an area of approximately 1.6 million square kilometres, equal to one-quarter of China's land mass. As the largest fresh water reserve outside the polar ice caps it is also known as Asia's water tower, or the "third pole". For climate change, the plateau is the equivalent of the canary in the coalmine. Ice core records from the Dasuopu glacier in Tibet reveal that the last 50 years have been the warmest in 1,000 years. Over the past three decades, the average temperature has increased by almost 1 degree Celsius, and Chinese climate scientists predict a further temperature rise of between 2.0 to 2.6 degrees Celsius by 2050.
As a direct consequence, with the exception of the Karakorum, the glaciers that feed Asia's great rivers – the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra – have retreated by 196 square kilometres in the last 40 years. Data from the International Commission on Snow and Ice reveal that the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking faster than anywhere else and could totally disappear by 2035.
Glacial melt has dramatic adverse effects on biodiversity, people and livelihoods with long-term implications for water, food and energy security. It can also trigger a higher incidence of natural disasters – landslides, flooding and glacial lake outbursts – that can, in turn, lead to internal displacement and the destruction of critical infrastructure. Over the longer term, higher temperatures will increase flooding in the rainy season and reduce water in the dry season, thus affecting food production in the provinces downstream, as well as the livelihoods of over 1 billion people in China, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Eventually water shortages will occur on a massive scale. The consequences for a region that is already highly prone to both floods and drought are dire. We are, in effect, facing a humanitarian catastrophe in the world's most populous region.
Overall, the impacts of climate change will be greatest on poor communities that are least able to adapt. Tibetan pastoralists depend upon the grasslands for their survival, and climate change is leading to historically unprecedented pressures. For example, at the source of the Yellow River, at the centre of the Plateau, over one-third of the grasslands have transformed into semi-desert conditions. As environmental security analysts would predict, this is leading to increased environmental migration largely under the auspices of a government-controlled scheme to promote the regeneration of the grasslands. Recent studies have shown that the resettlement scheme is creating new social problems and the environmental benefits are uncertain. A major problem is that we still do not know enough about climate impacts on the grasslands. Field investigations are few and far between. What we do know is that a simple causal relationship between overgrazing and environmental degradation – a "Tragedy of the Commons"-style scenario – is misleading, precisely because it fails to take into account climate change. Placing disproportionate blame on Tibetan pastoralists also greatly undervalues indigenous knowledge and the important role that the original custodians of the land can play in climate adaptation efforts.
What is taking place on the Tibetan Plateau throws into sharp relief the complex relationship between the environment and security understood broadly to encompass the safety and well being of individuals as well as states. The interdependencies between environmental degradation, human well–being and regional security can only be addressed on the basis of a cooperative and people–centred approach. The critical question for policymakers is how to develop a regional response that can encourage a new strategic vision, while at the same time deliver positive results in the short term. Toward this end, I would like to offer four suggestions.
First, given the magnitude of the emerging environmental crisis on the Tibetan Plateau, developing an integrated regional map of the security risks involved is now an urgent task. An even-handed approach to anticipating risks entails a high level of research coordination and cross-sectoral analysis. The science needed to underpin these risk assessments is highly challenging and will require interdisciplinary collaboration, especially between scientists, ethnographers and security analysts. On this basis, current modelling work in the field of global environmental change can be supplemented with grounded analysis of potential harms at the local level.
Second, the region is seriously lacking relevant institutions to deal with the crisis. A consultative process for considering adaptation options and identifying collective responses does not, as yet, exist. What is needed is an inclusive dialogue mechanism that can bring together many stakeholders, including vulnerable communities at risk, corporations involved in infrastructure development and national and local governments. In general, regional security in Asia is concentrated at the state level. The involvement of corporations or non-governmental organisations is rare. This crisis may well provide the necessary catalyst for revitalising security cooperation by helping to dissolve the traditional boundary between the state and its people, which places a serious constraint upon the responsive capacity of states to deal with transnational security challenges.
Third, and somewhat optimistically, in addressing a bigger threat, the potential exists for climate change to unite divided communities on the Tibetan Plateau. Conflict resolution has long been an important motivating factor in designing institutions for managing resources. And placing conflict dynamics within a broader regional framework may well help to ease ethnic tensions. An expanded regional security vision offers an opportunity to resolve conflicts over access to resources, as well as ensure a fairer distribution of the benefits.
Fourth, and at a deeper level, the threat of large-scale environmental catastrophe reaffirms the need for a twenty-first century view of progress that moves imperatively beyond the nineteenth century model of nation-building based on the expansive exploitation of natural resources. Rather than simply a strategic buffer zone caught between the ambitions of great powers, the Tibetan Plateau could become a strategic conservation zone acting as a buffer against environmental catastrophe that threatens one-fifth of humanity.
Clearly, such a transformative approach would not be without its immediate economic costs, but as a guarantee of future Asian security it may well be a price worth paying. Industrialised countries have accrued a large debt for past malpractices and they are now seeking to make amends. For developing counties with limited adaptive capacities, the impacts of climate change are potentially devastating and, therefore, a wait-and-see policy is no longer an option. In some cases, environmental damage is irreversible: losses in biodiversity that provide essential services for human survival, such as the control of crop pests and carbon storage, are difficult to restore. The threat of massive ecosystem decline is, in part, a consequence of the failure to act. Hence there is now an urgent need to look to the future and build cooperation on the basis of regional collective responsibility, not only between states but also between peoples. If this does not happen, then the pessimistic scenarios put forward by security analysts, of wide-scale migration and conflicts over access to resources, may well result.
Dr Katherine Morton is a fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. Her research interests include China's international relations, environmental governance, and non-traditional and human security. She is currently conducting research on the impacts of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau and its implications for regional security.
The author would like to thank the Asia Pacific Review for granting permission to publish an adapted version of the original article titled 'China and Environmental Security in the Age of Consequences' Asia Pacific Review, 15:2, 2008: 52-67.
Homepage image by Daniel J Miller


text:
Button It Up is a sweet little craft book written by Susan Beal. If you have a love for buttons + crafting this is the perfect book for you. Some of my favorite PDX crafters + friends contributed projects for the book [Melissa, Mariko, Amy K and Alicia P].
Last year we all met up at Crema for coffee + sweet treats and handed over our projects to Susan. My project was a simple pencil canister with button magnets and I love how they photographed it! It really is neat to see all our projects in print. You can find more information about the book here. If you would like a copy of your own, please leave your name in the comments below [I'll pick a name on Friday, March 6th].


text:
BISC110/s13:Guidelines for maintaining your lab notebook
Keeping a Lab Notebook
You must purchase a hardbound 'composition' notebook (the bookstore has them) before you attend the first lab. Loose-leaf notebooks will not be accepted. The pages in the notebook may be graph paper, wide-ruled, college-ruled or any other type approved by your lab instructor. This lab notebook will be used to record information and data before, during, and after performing your experiments.
There is no "right" way to keep a laboratory notebook, and the format varies between academic laboratories and institutions. Additionally, many scientific companies require that their employees' laboratory notebooks be dated, signed, and witnessed since notebooks can be used as evidence in a patent dispute to establish the timing of a discovery. You will not be required to have your notebooks witnessed, but we will follow good lab notebook procedures.
• Leave plenty of empty space in your lab notebook so that you can change or correct the procedures as you do the work. It is most important that what is written in the lab notebook accurately reflects what you did in lab!
• If you make mistakes, do NOT obliterate the error; instead, strike-through once. Never erase, use "white-out," or tear out pages. It is fine to strike-through or X-out (once!) whole pages if it is necessary to start over. You must use an indelible pen to write in your lab notebook. It would not be of much use as a legal document if it were written in pencil.
• This is the place to record information that is not in the Wiki, such as the manufacturer, lot number and expiration dates of chemical reagents. You should always record the stock concentrations and ingredients of reagents and do the calculation of effective (final) concentration.
• Your notebook is also the place to perform other calculations and to record all your data and observations. It is much more difficult to recreate what you've done in lab if parts of your experiments are written on scraps of paper instead of in your notebook. It is usually impossible to remember important aspects of how organisms treated in certain ways were different than the controls. Write down your impressions in detail. Since science is founded on the ability to reproduce the results of an experiment, it is vital that the details of the experiment be accurately and completely recorded.
While the organization of your lab notebook is somewhat flexible, there are key elements to help you communicate (with yourself as much as with others!)
• The front cover should have your name, semester and year, course name, and lab section.
• Each page of your notebook should have a page number.
• Please leave a few blank pages at the front of the notebook to create and maintain a Table of Contents.
• Keep up to date each week with the title of each lab and the page numbers
• Each lab session starts on its own page (on the front of the right hand page, not the back of another) and begins with the lab title (not just the number) and date. Each lab in the notebook should have the following headings and content:
1. Goal: Summarize the overall goal(s) of the lab. These can be found at the beginning of the lab in the Wiki or the beginning of the lab presentation.
2. Procedure: Clear, concise flow-diagrams, outlines, or layouts of your proposed experiments should be prepared in advance (before you come to lab!).
• This does not replace the Wiki and instead is a tool for you to refer to while performing experiments. This section does not need to (and should not) be a copy of the methods from the Wiki, nor should you print and directly paste the Wiki into your lab notebook. You should, instead, read the relevant protocols in the wiki and then condense the information into a schematic or diagram that is helpful for you, leaving plenty of empty space for notes, changes, raw data, results, and comments.
• The protocol/procedures in your notebook should be in your words/shorthand notation.
• Make sure to include all calculations!
3. Data: Observations and data taken during experimentation
• All raw data must be recorded!
• Any observations that you are prompted to make from the Wiki and any other observations that you make
• Do not include processed data in this section.
4. Conclusions and Comments: This is essential for a good notebook and consists of a bulleted list or paragraph summarizing the entire lab. Start to think about what your experiment and results mean in a broader context.
• Were all of the goals for the lab met? If not, why? Think about possible explanations. Science is all about troubleshooting unexpected results – sometimes the coolest results are the ones you did not expect.
• If you were to repeat this investigation, what might you do differently to improve the experiment?
Please note that there are many ways to keep a successful and accurate lab notebook, and it may take you some time to determine which way is best for you. However, you should always make sure that all of the above information is included in each lab and that it is clear to your reader. If you have any questions about keeping your lab notebook, please let your instructor know.
BIO 110 Lab Notebook Gradesheet
Front Cover: name, semester and year, course name and lab section _____/0.1 pt.
Table of Contents: all lab titles and page numbers included _____/0.2 pt.
All labs start on new page with lab title and date _____/0.1 pt.
All pages are numbered _____/0.1 pt.
Labs: 9 wet labs total, each worth 0.5 pts. for a total of 4.5 pts.
Each lab has thorough Goals, Procedure, Data, and Conclusions/Comments sections.
Lab 1 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 2 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 3 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 4 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 6 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 7 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 8 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 9 ______/0.5 pts.
Lab 10 ______/0.5 pts.
Total ______/5.0 pts.
An Example Page from a Lab Notebook:File:LabNotebookSample.pdf


text:
When I was cleaning the other day, I was noticing how many power strips I had in my house and how many "unused" things were plugged into them. (Along with those things just plugged straight into the wall outlet.)
There are 2 people that live in my house. We have 4 cell phone chargers – all plugged in and on any given day one of them may be charging a phone for a couple hours. I also have chargers for an iPod touch that is most often plugged in somewhere and not charging anything. If you have kids with cell phones, Gameboys, etc. you may find that you too, have lots of random chargers plugged in throughout your house.
Now along with doing the right thing and being green and stuff like that, you also can be costing yourself more money with your power company that is unnecessary. Unplugging TV's may not be something you feel like doing all the time and individually one charger doesn't generate a ton of power, but if you have 10 of them around your house only being used occasionally, you may want to consider plugging them in when you are charging the devices they are intended for and not leaving them plugged in when you are finished charging.
*thank you CNET for the photo


text:
There are times when it feels like the promises contained in Scripture mock us. Moments when the words intended to bring us comfort seem remote, detached, and distant. Friday morning in Newtown, Conn., was one of those times.
On Friday afternoon I stood outside my children's elementary school with hundreds of other parents. In the midst of small talk about what we were doing for Christmas break, all the while, there was a somber heaviness. On that day the world witnessed unspeakable evil juxtaposed with the Season of Advent.
It's the season in which the people of God remember, anticipate, and celebrate the fulfillment of God's promise to be here with us; that in the person of Jesus the long hoped for renewal, redemption, and restoration had come. This is what Matthew spoke of in his Gospel when he quoted the prophet Isaiah.
Matthew wrote, "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel' (which means 'God with us')" (Matthew 1:22-23 ©NIV).
Matthew was eager to point out to his readers that in the person of Jesus we can confidently say God is here, that surely God is with us.
But on Friday, for many people, the feeling was more like, "God is here? Really? Where exactly?"
When I heard the news of Friday my gut response was to say, "God, why?" My heart wondered where God was in all of this. Many people wondered the same thing. Sometimes it is hard to mesh the words of Scripture with our world.
One commentator suggested that it was precisely because God was not there that this heinous act happened. Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed we should not be surprised to see this kind of violence since we have removed God from our schools and our society. His sentiment is to say, "God is NOT here." If that is the case, then it surely can explain the existence of pure evil that we saw displayed on Friday.
However, thinking like that of Gov. Huckabee suggests that we somehow have the power to remove God from our schools and our society. This kind of God is quite small, weak, and impotent — one that is dictated by the mere whims of humanity. This is not the God of whom Matthew spoke.
Matthew spoke of the Almighty God fully embodied and revealed in the person of Jesus. So much so that he claimed he was Immanuel: God with us. He is here not in spite of the pain, nor did he come to explain it away. God is here in the midst of our suffering.
The hope of Advent is that God responded to the suffering of humanity by entering into it with us. He did not stand outside of it and look in with a wincing face and hope that everything would somehow work out. Nor did he see humans who removed him from their schools and societies and say, "Well fine, then, have it your way!" Not at all.
God saw the mess that humanity had gotten itself into, and God's heart broke. The writer of Genesis wrote that when God saw the evil hearts of humankind God's response was one of pain and a grieving heart. God's pain was the same pain Adam and Eve experienced as a result of their sinful choice to eat the fruit in the garden. Which raises the question, "What kind of God allows itself to experience the same pain as mere mortals?"
The answer?
The same one who willfully chose to enter into this world and stand alongside us in our misery. This is the God who is not a stranger to suffering, but one who is well acquainted with it. In the person of Jesus, we learn of a God who took upon himself our shame, our wounds and our burdens. He is the Heavenly Father who also lost a child to horrible violence, and weeps with the parents of those children killed in Newtown — one whose pain is as real as ours.
To speak of Immanuel is to speak of a God who is found in the midst of suffering. Try as you might you cannot remove him from schools, society, or anywhere. For wherever there is pain, agony or heartache there God will be also. God is one who suffers with us.
This enables us to say, "God is here."
When we utter these words, somehow the promises of Scripture seem a little less distant. They turn from mockery to comfort. What we do not need in these moments is a long and deep explanation of why this happened.
Too often in our attempt to move on we try to comprehend the incomprehensible. In the midst of the media frenzy, the conflicting reports, and clamor of social media the God who is with us whispers words comfort saying, "I know your pain, and I am in this with you."
Indeed. God is here.
These are words we can sit with, words that will sustain us in the darkest moments. At times we will struggle to believe them, and other moments they will be for us our surest salvation. All the while we know that God is with us. For now, we ache and cry out together, "How long, O Lord?"
Each time we do, we wait expectantly for an answer — longing for the time when we will not speak of our wounds and those who caused them, but will speak of our wounds and the God of grace who healed them. Our cry is one filled with faith, for we know the story of Jesus does not end in agony, but in glory.
And so, armed with this hope: May you, my brothers and sisters, see the day when God will at last restore, renew, and redeem all things – whether things in heaven or on earth. The day when all things will be made right, and even our greatest moments of suffering will be transformed into glory.
And may we always long for and hope for that day when the God who suffered with us and for us will have made his dwelling among us, and we will stand alongside one another and exclaim, "God is here!"
Michael Hidalgo is the Lead Pastor of Denver Community Church, and lives with his wife and children in downtown Denver, Colo. He blogs regularly at A View From a Point. Follow Michael on Twitter @michaelhidalgo.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!


text:
Gathering of Eagles West Point
Demonstrators were not permitted on the Academy grounds, so the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition planned a march planned along Freedom Road and lamentably encamped at a park which also happens to have many important war memorials.
As you go through my photos please bear in mind that the American flags you see in the gazebo in the park where the ANSWER folks were esconced actually belong to the park.
UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has more.
More VIDEO.


text:
Cracking the DNA Code
On a small island near Washington, D.C., Smithsonian researchers have found a genetic code that could revolutionize botany
The expedition team didn't expect the water to be so high or the final stretch of the planned route across a narrow channel impassable. The scientists have to scramble across a crude bridge of downed branches to get to the island's southeastern tip and begin collecting specimens.
"Essentially, we're standing in a tropical forest," says botanist John Kress. In the muggy heat, he's rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He grabs a small tree branch and brings its burgundy flowers into closer view. "I feel like I'm in Costa Rica," he says.
A high-pitched whistle emerges from the forest. Kress' colleague, botanist Dave Erickson, jokingly asks if it's a howler monkey, which lives in Central and South America.
"It's whatever you want it to be," says Kress.
Plummers Island, a 12-acre, teardrop-shaped landmass in the Potomac River—just over ten miles from Kress' office at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History—is about as unspoiled, and unlikely, a landscape as can be found inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Owned by the National Park Service since 1961, Plummers is also the most thoroughly studied island in North America. And, thanks to Kress and his colleagues, it is the first site in the world to have all 250 of its plant species barcoded.
DNA barcoding, the brainchild of Canadian geneticist Paul Hebert, is modeled after the Universal Product Code (UPC) found on consumer packaging. Each UPC has a number designating the manufacturer (say, a soft drink company) and a specific product identifier (diet, caffeine-free, etc.). Hebert found a segment of animal DNA common to all species (the manufacturing code) and varied enough to distinguish among animal species (the product identifier). But researchers have had a harder time finding a standardized DNA segment for plant life.
Starting five years ago, Kress' research team collected samples of every plant species on Plummers Island. Then, in a botany lab, Erickson and others determined each one's DNA sequence. From there, they homed in on three genetic zones—two genes and an "intergenic spacer" between genes—that collectively could distinguish the plants. Along with other botanists, Kress and Erickson are in the midst of a formal process to get the markers approved as the standard plant barcode. Kress is hoping for official acceptance within a year from the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, a project established in 2004 to compile a reference library of codes.
Until recently, taxonomists needed a plant's flowers or fruits to classify it, meaning they had to collect samples at specific times of the year. But with DNA barcoding, they can use any part of the plant—seeds, bark, roots or leaves—to identify it.
"But the biggest benefit is that you won't have to be an expert," says Kress. In the not-so-distant future, even schoolchildren will be able to identify plants with hand-held DNA sequencers. They could then upload the barcodes via smartphones to an online encyclopedia with basics about the species, botanical art and anecdotal information. The Food and Drug Administration could use barcoding to test herbal supplements; U.S. Customs and Border Protection could use it to identify suspicious imports.
Erickson has also found plant DNA in the ground-up guts of ten different orders of insects from Plummers Island. He wants to better understand which insects are specialists, meaning they eat certain plant species, and which are generalists, which eat just about anything.
"I'm a find 'em and grind 'em kind of guy," says Erickson, turning a common botanical slur into a boast. Kress, a vegetarian, rolls his eyes in feigned disgust.
"You're definitely not a specialist," Erickson teases, dropping a bright green caterpillar into a tiny specimen bag. "You're a generalist. I've seen you eat."


text:
Testing mobile devices involves many phases, including the validation of the devices in the actual field conditions where subscribers will use them. However, field testing in the diverse conditions of terrain, population density, physical location and motion of devices is extremely time-consuming and costly.
As the wireless industry works to introduce 4G LTE and WiMAX products and solutions, field testing will be particularly important. The MIMO technology used to enhance system performance and achieve the high data rates expected will cause product performance to vary substantially depending on the RF environment.
The Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution allows service providers and equipment manufacturers to take real-world channel conditions collected from drive testing, performed in many ecosystems in different sites around the globe, and replay this data in the ACE™ MX MIMO channel emulator in any lab, at any phase of the design and qualification cycle.
Field conditions in laboratory product testing have typically been recreated with channel emulation using industry-approved and standardized channel models. These statistical representations of channel conditions are very useful in characterizing generalized RF environments for testing and certification, but they do not capture the unique and specific conditions experienced by a device as it moves through RF conditions in an actual wireless network. The Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution can augment current test conditions with actual field data collected from locations of interest.
Using the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution involves three phases:
- Collecting field data
- Conditioning the data for playback
- Playback of the field data on the Azimuth ACE MX MIMO Channel Emulator
To collect field data, the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution is integrated with industry-standard drive testing software allowing the re-use of data from drive tests. Drive test data is converted into a playback file for a given number of base stations. The data can be filtered, smoothed and filled to ensure realistic playback conditions. The data is played back on the channel emulator. A playback control tool configures the ACE MX MIMO channel emulator and streams the playback conditions to the signal path of the channel emulator between the mobile device (e.g. UE) and the base station (e.g. eNodeB).
ACE MX MIMO Channel Emulator
The flexible, scalable ACE MX wireless channel emulator has been designed for MIMO- and OFDM-based systems, delivering a range of configurations for MIMO and/or SISO system testing. The intuitive and easy-to-use configuration and control interface enables efficient, automated and repeatable testing of 2G, 3G WiMAX, LTE and other 4G infrastructure equipment and devices.
AzMapper Application
AzMapper software analyzes drive test logs and automatically recreates these channel conditions for playback. First, the field data is filtered to extract the useful and significant data from the mass of collected information. The data is then smoothed to make sure that the behavior of the playback best imitates the time varying nature of the real world. Finally, the data is analyzed for missing segments, which can be filled or closed with interpolated data to ensure continuity. All the parameters of the filtering and mapping are configurable to the user's preferences.
Any components that are removed (filtered out) and interference that is detected in the field data is added back to the environment in the form of AWGN to ensure operating conditions identical to those in the field. In addition, the velocity of the mobile device is added based on either information from the GPS coordinates over time or as a fixed velocity. The application provides advanced visualization views to help the user interpret both the source data and output data before creating the playback file.
AzPlayer Application
The ACE MX MIMO channel emulator, together with the AzPlayer application, supports real-time streaming of playback files for unlimited playback to channels on one or more ACE MX wireless channel emulators. With the easy-to-use play control, the data can be played back, paused, looped and even coupled with other playback files, accurately replicating real-world conditions.
Figure 1 Mobile device testing process with Azimuth solution.
Figure 1 shows the complete process flow and components.
Targeted Applications
By utilizing measurements of field data and playing them back through a wireless channel emulator, R&D and QA engineers and operators can test device performance against the dynamics of the field before ever deploying products in these environments. Operators can troubleshoot and optimize system performance, introduce field-trial support for qualification of devices in the lab, reproduce known trouble spots in the lab for analysis, provide throughput performance metrics on devices before deployment and allow qualification for specific markets and environments. Semiconductor and device manufacturers are able to characterize expected performance in real-world environments, reproduce and verify field issues, benchmark performance with other devices and optimize algorithms for best performance. Infrastructure manufacturers are able to test interoperability with devices under real-world conditions, benchmark system performance, characterize enhancements or improvements under real conditions and test algorithms such as soft handover in life-like conditions.
Azimuth Systems,
Acton, MA
(978) 263-6610,
RS No. 302


text:
Double hook Chrome
Double hook
CR 100.00 We know what suits the bathroom! Don't spoil the overall impression of demanding bathroom implementation by the final details. The RAVAK bathroom accessories are made from first quality materials (matt metal and glass), which resist to the most stressed bathroom environment. We can thus provide a five-year guarantee. Their design is a safe bet in a modern and universally applicable solution.
Series Chrome
Detailed perfection
The success of a whole lies in the details. For your bathroom to become a complex, functioning and aesthetic living organism, you should refine it down to the smallest detail.
The matt glass and glossy chrome-plated surface of RAVAK bathroom accessories is elegant but not overstated, wherever you put them.
RAVAK bathroom accessories are made of materials that can withstand even the busy bathroom environment and allow for easy maintenance at the same time. That is one of the reasons why we can provide our five-year warranty.
Clean and simple design
Fits every modern bathroom.
Technical details
- Material, colour: Chrome gloss
- Warranty: 5 years
- Part of the following concept: Chrome
We recommend using RAVAK Chrome Cleaner for cleaning external surfaces.
Price list
Order number | Dimensions | Description |
X07P186 | CR 100 Clothes hook |


text:
Modular Concept
We offer you a variety of different foil setups which are ideally customized to your individual requirements. The Levitaz Style-Finder helps you to find out which foil suits you best.
The great benefits of the Levitaz Kitefoils are that all the foil parts are compatible with each other. Therefore, you can adapt your foil to any range of application.
Enjoy the modular concept of the Levitaz Kitefoils and supplement your range with various masts, front- and rear wings and fuselages according to your personal wishes.
Levitaz translates the quality and the approach of the race series "one-to-one" to serial production which underlines our approach to guarantee the modularity of the whole Levitaz product range.
Levitaz Kitefoils grow with your skills and your personal challenges! No matter which conditions you are facing, be prepared and enjoy your perfect day on the water.
Choose your foil according to your specific skills and style!


text:
- Security News
- Vulnerabilities & Exploits
- Security 101: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Exploits
View Infographic: Security 101: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Exploits
A zero-day attack exploits an unpatched vulnerability, and could significantly affect organizations using vulnerable systems. Until a patch becomes available, it is often a race between threat actors trying to exploit the flaw and vendors or developers rolling out a patch to fix it.
Here's an overview detailing what businesses need to know about zero-day vulnerabilities — what they are and how they work — so they can better mitigate the risks and the threats that exploit them.
A zero-day vulnerability is a flaw, weakness, or bug in software, firmware, or hardware that may have already been publicly disclosed but remain unpatched. Researchers may have already disclosed the vulnerability, and the vendor or developer may already be aware of the security issue, but an official patch or update that addresses it hasn't been released.
The flaw is referred to as a "zero-day" vulnerability because the vendor or developer — and accordingly, the users and organizations whose systems are affected by the vulnerability — have just learned of the vulnerability. Once the vulnerability becomes public and the vendor or developer already deployed a patch for it, it becomes a known, or "n-day" vulnerability.
When hackers or threat actors successfully develop and deploy proofs of concept (PoCs) or an actual malware that exploits the vulnerability while the vendor is still working on rolling out a patch (or sometimes, unaware of the vulnerability's existence), it becomes a zero-day exploit or attack. While developers and vendors, as well as researchers and security experts, continuously invest time and effort to find and fix security flaws, the same can be said for threat actors, too. The result is an arms race between threat actors finding and trying to exploit a vulnerability and the vendors working to release a patch to fix it.
Zero-day exploits aren't only highly valued in legitimate bug bounty programs — with one even fetching up to US$2 million — they are also valuable in underground marketplaces. For threat actors, zero-day exploits are a boon because most security defenses are designed to handle known flaws. Attacks based on unknown and unpatched vulnerabilities can thus go unnoticed for a long time.
The success of zero-day attack also depends on the organization's "window of exposure," or the time between the discovery of a vulnerability and the release (and installation) of a patch that fixes it. Even known vulnerabilities can have a lengthy window of exposure — whether due to the organization's patch management policies or the level of difficulty in developing the patch. A longer window of exposure makes it more likely for an attack to remain undetected.
Threat actors use zero-day exploits in a number of ways:
During the peak of their activities, exploit kits were known to integrate zero-day exploits for Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash. Perhaps the most notorious example is Stuxnet, a worm that exploited several zero-day vulnerabilities and was mainly designed to affect components of an industrial control system (ICS). A series of attacks also resulted from the trove of exploits that The Shadow Brokers hacking group leaked. The most infamous of these was EternalBlue, which was used by the WannaCry and Petya/NotPetya ransomware families.
Other recent examples are the PoCs and exploit codes that the independent researcher, going by the handle SandboxEscaper, publicly released. These PoCs and exploits demonstrated how a (then) zero-day vulnerability in Windows 10's Task Scheduler (CVE-2019-1069) can be taken advantage of to gain access to normally protected files. And if chained with other security flaws, the hacker can escalate privileges to hijack the vulnerable system.
A zero-day vulnerability poses significant security risks, with effects that mostly depend on the attack's intent. BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708), a zero-day vulnerability in remote desktop services, made headlines in May due to its "wormability." Successfully exploiting BlueKeep can enable malware to propagate, similar to the way WannaCry used the EternalBlue exploit. The risk BlueKeep posed was so significant that Microsoft even released patches for Windows 2003 and Windows XP, which were out-of-support and end-of-life operating systems.
Beyond the exposure of an organization's sensitive data and mission-critical systems, businesses will also contend with marred reputations, financial losses, and penalties imposed by data privacy and patch management regulations.
Cybercriminals and threat actors can capitalize on the gap between the discovery and patch of a vulnerability — a gap that, on average, reportedly takes an organization around 69 days to fix. In a 2018 survey by the Ponemon Institute, 76% of organizations whose endpoints were successfully compromised were due to attacks that used zero-day exploits. In today's era of digital transformation, where newfangled technologies are constantly put together and integrated into existing (and sometimes, outdated) ones, vulnerabilities are inevitably introduced into systems that use them. In fact, zero-day attacks are predicted to increase from one per week to once per day in 2021.
Given their nature, zero-day attacks are inherently unpredictable and difficult to prepare for and defend against. This is especially true for organizations whose security measures are developed around known and already-patched flaws. A proactive, defense-in-depth approach, however, can help mitigate them.
Here are some of the other countermeasures that organizations can adopt to defend against zero-day attacks:
Virtual patching (also known as vulnerability shielding) is one of the mechanisms that can complement an organization's existing security measures. It functions as a countermeasure against threats that exploit known and unknown vulnerabilities by implementing layers of security policies and rules that intercept an exploit from successfully taking paths to and from a vulnerability. This can buy organizations additional time, enabling their IT and system administrators to test official patches before they are applied.
Virtual patching also provides protection to IT infrastructures for which patches are no longer issued or are too expensive to update, such as legacy systems, end-of-support OSs, and internet-of-things (IoT) devices.
To learn more about zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits — what they are, how they work, and how to mitigate them — view our infographic, "Security 101: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Exploits."
The Trend Micro™ Deep Security solution provides virtual patching that protects cloud workloads, servers, and containers from threats that exploit network-based vulnerabilities in critical applications, operating systems (Linux kernels, AIX, Solaris, and Windows including those in end-of-support status like Windows Server 2008 and Server 2003), and platforms like Docker and Kubernetes.
The Trend Micro Apex One™ security solution's virtual patching delivers the timeliest vulnerability protection across a variety of endpoints, including point-of-sale (PoS), internet of things (IoT) devices, and systems with end-of-support (EoS) operating systems.
The Trend Micro™ TippingPoint® Threat Protection System provides virtual patching and extensive zero-day protection against network-exploitable vulnerabilities via Digital Vaccine® filters.
The Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ solution provides detection, in-depth analysis, and proactive response to attacks using exploits and other similar threats through specialized engines, customized sandboxing, and seamless correlation across the entire attack lifecycle, allowing it to detect threats even without any engine or pattern update.
Like it? Add this infographic to your site:
1. Click on the box below. 2. Press Ctrl+A to select all. 3. Press Ctrl+C to copy. 4. Paste the code into your page (Ctrl+V).
Image will appear the same size as you see above.


text:
With more than five times the number of prisoners than the detention facility on Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. jail next to Bagram Airfield is just one of many factors affecting the degree to which U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan after 2014.
President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will meet next week in the White House to discuss the fate of the prison, the pace of America's withdrawal, and the size of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
"The first thing is to establish how many will stay in Afghanistan" after 2014, said George Little, the chief Pentagon spokesman. Karzai has warned that he will not approve a troop agreement unless all Afghans in U.S. custody are turned over to his jurisdiction.
A complicating factor is the U.S. custody of suspects who allegedly committed insider attacks against allied troops. These attackers, who often posed as Afghan police officers and soldiers, killed U.S. and allied troops at a record rate in 2012.
The number of prisoners detained at the high-security, $60 million detention facility is a tightly protected figure. Afghan officials, prison administrators, International Security Assistance Force spokesmen, and senior Pentagon officials all have repeatedly declined comment in recent weeks on how many are held at the facility located next to Bagram Airfield. U.S. Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435 is the unit assigned to run the detention facility.
"As a matter of operational security, we do not discuss numbers of detainees transferred or currently held by CJIATF 435 or U.S. Forces," said Col. Thomas Collins, an ISAF spokesman in Kabul.
However, President Obama discussed the numbers in December. In one of his required periodic reports to Congress under the War Powers Act , Obama wrote on Dec. 14 that "United States Armed Forces are detaining in Afghanistan approximately 946 individuals under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) as informed by the law of war."
The vast majority of the 946 are detained by CJIATF 435. A small number of recently captured prisoners are kept at local commands until they can be transferred to the detention facility next to Bagram in the Parawan province.
Obama's report did not state whether the prisoners were captured on the battlefield or were taken into custody for other reasons. "We do not talk about individual detainees and we do not discuss the provenance" of the prisoners' presence in custody, said Lt. Col. Todd Brasseale, a Pentagon spokesman.
Since 2005, Karzai has demanded that prisoners held by the U.S. and the NATO coalition be turned over to Afghan jurisdiction -- with the exception of foreign nationals who were captured in military operations.
About one-third of the 946 in Parwan are thought to be foreign nationals, mostly Pakistani but also Yemenis and Saudis, Brasseale said. Karzai has said that he does not want custody of the foreign nationals.
In November, Karzai called for "urgent actions" by the U.S. to release the prisoners in Parawan to his control. He said in a statement that the U.S. did not "have the right to run prisons and detain Afghan nationals in Afghanistan."
Karzai threatened to cancel the already difficult negotiations on a post-2014 presence for U.S. forces. A main sticking point to those negotiations involves "status of forces" -- whether U.S. troops in the residual force would be immune from Afghan law. Iraq's refusal to provide immunity forced the U.S. to remove military forces from Iraq.
Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, has said that more than 70 detainees held by the U.S. under "administrative detention" have already been cleared of wrongdoing by Afghan courts. He said the U.S. had no justification for continuing to hold them since administrative detention was not recognized under Afghan law.
"There are some prisoners found innocent by the court who are still in custody," Faizi said. "This act is a serious breach of a memorandum of understanding."
The U.S. has not faced the same issue at Guantanamo, where the host nation of Cuba has not claimed jurisdiction of the alleged terrorists held on the naval base.
Under U.S. court rulings and acts of Congress, many of the 166 prisoners at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay have been cleared to return to their own countries or to a third-party nation willing to take them pending agreements on their continued monitoring and detention.
The rest of the prisoners at Gitmo, where the first 20 captives in the war on terror arrived in January 2002, can be tried before a military commission. There is no such prospect for the prisoners next to Bagram.
"We have never held a military commission in Afghanistan and we don't expect there will be one," Brasseale said.
A senior Pentagon official, speaking on background, said "our goal, eventually, is to turn all of the prisoners over" to the Afghans, but the official added that "there is not a mechanism currently in place" for achieving the goal.
The Parwan prisoner impasse has left the U.S. in a legal and political bind under international law, the Geneva Conventions and the law of armed conflict, said Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps Judge Advocate General.
"We are simply disregarding agreements with the Afghans," said Solis, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University who also teaches the law of war at West Point. "There is no guidebook for this, no precedent for this situation."
For years, Parwan was a key factor in U.S. worldwide intelligence gathering operations, as interrogators grilled insurgents captured on the battlefield for information on Al Qaeda and the war on terror.
In August 2009, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the coalition commander as head of the International Security Assistance Force, said Parwan was at risk of becoming a "strategic liability" for the U.S. McChrystal said the extrajudicial detentions at Bagram were eroding Afghan support for the allies.
Under a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and the Afghan governments reached last March, the U.S. was to have turned over all of the prisoners in September. This led to an awkward change of command ceremony at Parwan on Sept. 9, which Army Lt. Gen. Keith Huber, commander of CJIATF 435, declined to attend.
The U.S. transferred about 3,000 prisoners to the Afghans. The U.S. held back more than 50 who were captured before March along with hundreds of others captured by U.S. forces between March and September.
The Memorandum of Understanding called for the U.S. to turn over the entire Parwan jail to the Afghans, but the U.S. retained a section closed off to the Afghans.
In the dispute over control of the Parwan facility, the U.S. stance has been that the Afghans might not be ready to manage the jail and that the corrupt Afghan justice system might hold trials that would result in the release of dangerous prisoners.
In its latest "Report on Progress and Security and Stability in Afghanistan" to Congress last month, the Defense Department said "the Afghan judicial system continues to face numerous challenges."
The system is riddled with "systemic corruption at all levels resulting in a lack of political will to pursue prosecutions against many politically connected individuals," the Defense Department report said.
U.S. and Afghan officials declined comment on whether suspects in insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on coalition forces that have killed at least 62 allied troops last year were being held back for fear they would be turned loose. Several field commands said perpetrators in the attacks had been sent to Parwan.
One such suspect was a 15-year-old boy allegedly working for the Taliban. A Marine spokesman said the boy had been sent to Parwan after he killed three Marines in southwestern Helmand province in August. According to the Long War Journal, at least 22 suspects in insider attacks have been captured, but U.S. and Afghan officials declined comment on their status.
"No one is ever charged with anything so it's difficult to know what they're being held for" at Parwan, where prisoners "are not afforded even the minimal protections that the people at Guantanamo have," said Heather Barr, a researcher in Kabul for Human Rights Watch, an independent advocacy group.
Barr said she had attended sessions of the Detention Review Boards set up by the U.S. to determine the status of the prisoners, but the boards have never led to specific charges against prisoners.
"We know of only one case that has gone to trial," Barr said, and that case involved a prisoner, Abdul Sabor, who was captured by the French and handed over to the Afghans. Sabor, who allegedly killed five French troops in an insider attack last January, has been sentenced to death and his case is now under appeals in the Afghan courts, Barr said.
Barr said the U.S. was "trying to bully the Afghans into setting up an administrative detention system" for high value prisoners that would allow them to be held indefinitely without the risk of a trial that might set them free.
"The Afghan government has said it's not going to do administrative detention, it's unconstitutional under Afghan law," Barr said.
British officials have argued against transferring prisoners to the Afghans. In a November letter to Parliament, British Defense Secretary Phillip Hammond wrote that he was canceling future transfer of insurgents captured by British forces to the Afghans on grounds that they might be tortured.
"There are currently reasonable grounds for believing that UK-captured detainees who are transferred to Lashkar Gah would be at real risk of serious mistreatment," Hammond said in a reference to the Afghan-run jail in the southwestern Helmand province capital of Lashkar Gah.
U.S. Congressional leaders have expressed concerns that Afghan prisoners who still pose a threat might be released. In an August statement, Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, cited the release of a "high-value terrorist" by Iraq over U.S. objections.
"We call upon the President and Secretary of Defense (Leon) Panetta to extend all efforts to ensure that this tragic mistake is not repeated with terrorists currently in U.S. custody in Afghanistan," McKeon said.
The central question on the Afghan prisoner issue was whether "the U.S. courts are going to take notice of what's going on in Afghanistan" as they did in setting minimal habeas corpus rights on the charges against prisoners in Guantanamo, said Donald Huber, a former Navy judge advocate general and now dean of the South Texas College of Law.
"I don't think they will. You could make the argument that it's even a darker black hole" in Afghanistan in terms of international law than it was in Guantanamo, Huber said. "I don't see the U.S. courts intervening. If anything, it's a tougher problem than Guantanamo."